Customer Reviews

Whose Line Is it Anyway?: Season One, Volume One (Uncensored)

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first became aware of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" through the reruns of the original British version on Comedy Central. Though Clive Anderson (the original host) was not as funny as Drew Carey, he had a knack for delivering witty barbs and insults. Then, in 1998, the show came to America (apparently, we wanted it and bought it). Clive Anderson came with it, but after a handful of episodes, he was replaced with Drew Carey. I guess the stuffed suits in the studio thought that American audiences would relate better to an American host.

Most episodes of the American "Whose Line" star Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles, and Drew Carey, with a fourth actor rotating in and out. These usually consisted of Greg Proops (a frequent guest on the British 'Whose Line'), Chip Esten (also occasionally on the British), Brad Sherwood (also seen in UK), Kathy Greenwood, and Denny Siegel, though there were also appearances by Ian Gomez (Larry Almada on 'The Drew Carey Show'), Steven Colbert (yes, THE Steven Colbert!), Kathy Kinney (Mimi on 'The Drew Carey Show'. You can see her here without makeup!), and my all-time favorite, Josie Lawrence, a frequent participant in the British 'Whose Line', whose comic genius and musical abilities made an excellent complement to Wayne's on the American. Though many women have appeared on "Whose Line" since it first debuted in the UK, Josie, IMHO, is the "Whose Line Diva".

The cast participates in various improv games, and improved songs, most of which set the audience roaring in laughter (and me too!), especially in one of the most popular games, "Hoedown", one of the remnants from the UK's version. I have every intention of adding both versions of this release to my collection, and intend to purchase every "Whose Line" DVD release, which hopefully will be frequent. :) And not just the American, but let's get the British "Whose Line" over here too! Comedy Central has stopped airing them to make room for "Mad TV" and "The Daily Show", which are not my taste.

The show gets 5 stars... but I give Warner Bros. 3 stars for the way they marketed and released this show. ONE: the UNCENSORED version is ONLY regarding the bonus features. You WILL still hear the beeps and the word 'censored' over certain hand gestures, etc. on the episodes. There is only one example of this on this set and that is the very last episode during Hoedown where Ryan Stiles makes a reference to 'using my right hand'(which is beeped). TWO: not releasing the entire season is a letdown. So we have to pay full price for a half season? To me that is a litte annoying and smacks of greed. THREE: The episode list is confusing. There are 5 episodes on each disc. Do they say "episode 1", "episode 2", etc? Noooooo. They say -for example- Episode 106, episode 102, episode 111, etc. So somewhere they did a lot of slicing and dicing before they first aired this show back in 1998. I hope Warner Bros. looks at these reviews because I would like to see these things fixed in future DVD sets. Otherwise, the show is great and funny as it always was and the gag reels is hillarious. 20 minutes of goofs up and Ryan pleading(or acting up) for a restroom break, etc. LOL. I didn't realise so much work went into filming this show... you will see what I mean if you watch the Gag reels. Great show but Please release entire seasons! And get the cast to do some sort of 'making of' or commentaries!

This 2 disk Whose Line DVD Set is a great way to spend money if you like comedy shows. With 10 episodes from the 1st season (1998), the episodes are generally pretty good. (Parents: Please note the episodes ARE censored. the 'Uncensored' label actually refers to the special features, which are not for ones who dislike strong lanuage and/or themes. So if you have kids and let them watch the show on tv, they can watch this if you keep them away from the special features) The Special Features are HILARIOUS!!!!! They show games that never made it to tv, and 2 gag reels, (my favorites) which are where most of the Strong Language comes from, Which show you how many ideas were rejected by the censor (whom the preformers hated) By the way, don't miss a long scene in the gag reel where Ryan Styles keeps trying to ask for a restroom break. The only real complaint I have with the DVD is that it could use more episodes. So all in all, buy this DVD! You will be happy you did.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? is my favorite show on television right now. It's packed to the brim and overflowing with hilarious moments, great musical performances, and improvisational slip-ups. Brilliance in its finest form.

So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that it was coming out on DVD. I was dead set on getting the Uncensored version because, if you've watched the show as much as I have, you'd want to break out of the normal, FCC-monitored routine, too. Something truly different.

This DVD is great, absolutely, but I have a few quips about it. When I heard that the DVD was uncensored, along with the numerous adult content warnings, I expected hands-down, fully uninhibited content. However, the episodes themselves are still censored. There was only one censor in one episode on this DVD, though, and I don't believe it really had to be censored, either (I'll let you watch to see for yourself). This doesn't give me much hope for future releases.

Also... a little too short. 10 episodes and some special features? It's kind of disappointing that I got through this DVD in a few hours. As short as this one was, and considering it's only Volume 1 of Season 1, they better come out one after another fast to hold my interest.

My favorite part of this DVD set was the special features. I had been watching the same episodes over and over on TV, so seeing some outtakes really did it for me. The gag reels are absolutely hilarious! And uncensored! You'll see plenty of the cast's obvious disdain for the director (lots of "Hold, please"). My favorite in the gag reel is the one where Greg is doing "Let's Make A Date." I leave the watching up to you.

In summary, this DVD is wonderful. A must have for any diehard fan of the show on TV. But again, it's a little short, so it'll probably spend most of the time on your shelf. But it's a great addition to any TV-on-DVD collection.

When this show was on a few years ago, I always made time to sit down and watch it. It didn't have a script, or a plot, or acting. But, nevertheless, it was vastly entertaining, and, for my money, more funny than most sitcoms that were out at the time. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was always better viewed with some of your friends helplessly howling with you, while simultaneously marvelling at the quick wits and inventiveness of the cast. Now, I've never been much of a Drew Carey fan; he doesn't really make me laugh. But he was the main reason the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? was put on the airwaves, so, for this, he gets my thanks.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? was an improvisational comedy show which had British roots; it used the premise of a game show as a framework, with a host and a panel of four participants, except that, in this game show, the points don't really matter and the winner is arbitrarily chosen by Drew Carey. As host, Carey got to choose the scenario or "game" the players would play. All in all, the cast was wondrously dependable in their ability to tickle our funny bone. These guys were excellent ad-libbers. I did feel, however, that the segment where the "winner" gets to do something with Drew near the episode's end was almost always a let down. I'm not sure if this is because of my antipathy towards Drew or because Drew just isn't that good at improvising.

What made the show work was that the contestants were genuinely funny performers; add to that the fact that three of the participants were regulars, which gave 'em the chance to get in sync with each other comedically, resulting, almost paradoxically, in a tighter, improvisational style of levity. Discounting Drew, there were three regulars: Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady. Stiles and Mochrie had great chemistry together and were quick-thinking funnymen who were equally adept with the quip or the occasional physical comedy. Personally, I thought Colin Mochrie was the funniest one of all. Wayne Brady was a genius with the impromptu lyrics and a good singer, to boot. With his congenial personality, you could see how he got his own show.

The fourth seat was reserved for a rotating guest list, the most often used of whom were the smartly glib Greg Proops, the amiable Chip Esten, and the goofy-expressioned Brad Sherwood. Stunt guests included Robin Williams and Whoopie Goldberg (who tanked), and even Stephen Colbert guest starred in two episodes. But I have to agree with a previous reviewer in that British comedienne Josie Lawrence, in particular, was always a delight and gave Wayne Brady a run for his money in the tunes department. In the original British Whose Line, Josie often tore up the crowd with her ad lib song renditions.

The most popular games played were "Let's Make a Date," "Superheroes," "Newscasters," "Party Quirks," "Questions Only," "Helping Hands," and the dreaded "Hoedown" (which Mochrie loathed). My favorites games were "Scenes from a Hat" (participants would enact audience-written scenarios drawn from a hat), "Props" (the players are given props, which they must find a funny use for), "Mission: Impossible" (often with Mochrie and Styles, who enact spy capers), "Narrate" (again Mochrie and Styles, who channel film noir), "Three-Headed Broadway Star" (three of 'em join in a song, whilst taking turns singing only one word at a time), "Greatest Hits" (usually with Wayne Brady singing quick snippets about a product Drew selects, with hilarious promotional intros by two others of the cast), and "Song Styles" (Wayne Brady must improvise and serenade an audience member to a song style suggested by the audience).

Heads up to the consumer: there will be two versions of this dvd released. There's the censored version (which is what we saw on tv) and the uncensored version (which, to me, is the one to get). Both dvds will contain the first 10 episodes of Season One, complete with outtakes. Hopefully, there are more bonus features included.

Reruns of this show is still on at times on cable television, but, now, that's not good enough anymore. Hopefully, in due time, we'll see the release of all the episodes, of the U.S. and British versions both. Until then, this isn't a bad start.

I'm glad to read that this is show is finally available...

The main reason I'm posting though is that I wanted to point out that above it's listed as 1 disc and 110 min runtime. I looked it up on the Warner Bros site, and it's actually 2 discs, 220 minutes total runtime, which is a total of 10 episodes.

This has been a great resource for me to use in my drama classes when I teach improvisation. Sometimes my middle school students don't quite understand how the improv activities should work. I show them an episode from this "censored" dvd and it all makes sense to them. They also get to see the best of the best do improv. They absolutely love watching the dvd AND doing the activities in class. They acquire the improv skills much faster with the aid of this dvd. Plus it's soooo much fun to watch.

This show remains one of the "default" options for TV viewing in our household whenever it's on (which is usually once or twice a day on ABC Family). It doesn't seem to matter how often we've seen each episode; the skits are so funny that catch phrases from some of them have become imbedded in our family's lexicon. Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie and Wayne Brady are the regulars, with others including Greg Proops and Brad Sherwood appearing on a rotating basis. Drew Carey as host assigns various improvisational situations to the cast of four, with occasional help from the audience. There are regularly occurring skits: some of my personal favorites are the "Dating Game" takeoff, where the "datee" has to guess the identity of the prospective "daters" based on their answers (one highlight from season one that comes to mind is the one where Ryan Stiles has to imitate a man slowly turning into a parrot), "Props," where teams of two have to find clever uses for a variety of found items and the recurring scenario (whose title I forget) where Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie play co-hosts of an infomercial hawking a made-for-TV song compilation (suggested by the audience; for example, songs for firefighters) that Wayne Brady then has to translate into on-the-spot song interpretations. This "weird genius" ability of Wayne Brady to ad lib hilarious song snippets about virtually any subject and in any song style was later a regular part of his lamentably short talk show. In fact, the three regulars, as well as Proops and Sherwood in particular, are all comic geniuses, in my opinion, and part of what makes them so is their willingness (if not eagerness) to make complete idiots of themselves on national television.

However, the reason I am giving this DVD four instead of five stars is the fact that it doesn't contain ALL of season one! After waiting for so long to release this show on DVD, why split up a single season into more than one volume (presuming from the title of this one that a Season 1, Volume 2 is forthcoming)?

Having said that, however, you can't fail to get a snicker, a chortle, a belly laugh or, frequently, side-clutching, tear-pouring, air-gasping hysterics from watching this show -- and, as mentioned in other reviews, since the "uncensored" parts of this DVD are all in the extra features, it's generally appropriate for anyone old enough to understand the humor.

This uncensored version comes with 2 discs. I've played sections of both discs and it appears that the audio is slightly ahead of the video. It's not incredibly annoying, but it is disappointing.

Seeing the uncensored sections is amusing; For example, they show you clips where the "censor guy" comes out and warns Drew that they can't air a scene where Wayne Brady has fallen in love with a hamster.

Finally! Took Warner Bros long enough lol :).'Least they listen to their fans (unlike some companies).

'Whose Line'is one of the few genuinely funny shows out there... Most shows these days try too hard to make you laugh and fall flat on their faces. 'Whose Line' is unscripted and unpredictable. I find that refreshing compared to the reality shows out there.

The guys don't hold anything back and get in digs at each other in every ep... you can tell they really enjoy what they are doing. The show never gets old, gag-wise... you'll be in stitches each episode :-D.

Two of my favorite games are 'Scenes from a Hat' and 'Weird Newscasters'

I wish there were more extras on the disc (like a tour of the studio) but beggars can't be choosers ;-) hehe.

What you waiting for? Run and pick this up! You won't regret it *waves*